


Smoke and Mirrors

by Gaffsie



Category: Friends (TV)
Genre: Bisexual Male Character, Bisexuality, Cross-Generational Friendship, Future Fic, Gen, Introspection, Parenthood, Ross tries, Smoking, Thanksgiving
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-08
Updated: 2019-08-08
Packaged: 2020-08-13 01:50:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20166163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gaffsie/pseuds/Gaffsie
Summary: Chandler's furtive smoke break is interrupted by Ben.





	Smoke and Mirrors

**Author's Note:**

> [Mirror](https://ibb.co/cNgBQWz)

Chandler loves his family, but sometimes the bustle of a typical Bing-Geller-Green Thanksgiving gets to be a little too much for him.

Jack is moping over Monica unplugging his Xbox and forcing him to _socialize,_ and Erica is moping because they wouldn't let her spend Thanksgiving with her friends, and all that teenage angst is hanging over the living-room like a gloomy cloud.

They'll cheer up soon enough, Chandler knows. Like everyone else, they love Monica's cooking.

Monica is currently cooking up a storm in the kitchen, exhausted, but happy the way only caring for her family makes her.

Emma is home from college, a new boyfriend on her arm and a tattoo on her wrist.

_That_ little screaming match had been interesting. Chandler's ears are still ringing from Rachel's shrill voice demanding to know why she'd ever ruin her beautiful skin like that.

Ross had been more quiet, thank God.

Chandler retreats to the terrace, where the blustery winds keep everyone else at bay.

He looks around furtively, making sure that no one's followed him, and then he lifts the lid of the grill and picks up his pack of emergency cigarettes.

It's not a vice he entertains all that often, because Monica is like a bloodhound when it comes to the scent of tobacco, but sometimes he feels the need to indulge himself.

Every time he lights one up, it's like coming home, and as he takes that first wondrous drag, his shoulders immediately sink down, finally relaxing.

He's interrupted by quiet footsteps approaching from the side.

“I'm not smoking!”

Reflexively, Chandler whirls around, looking for some place he can hide the evidence.

“That makes two of us,” a softly sardonic voice says behind him.

He turns around, and sees Ben, holding an unlit cigarette to his lips.

“Got a light?” he asks, and Chandler fumbles for his lighter.

Ben takes a deep drag on his cig, blowing out smoke with a satisfied sigh.

“Does Ross know you smoke?” Chandler asks, a little curious.

Ben snorts and takes another drag from his cigarette.

“Don't know,” he says.

He shrugs. “Don't care.”

“Monica will kill me if she finds out,” Chandler offers, and it makes Ben grin at him, those front teeth he never quite grew into showing.

“Stephen's the same,” he says, green eyes shining with amusement.

“He keeps threatening to put posters of diseased lungs all over our apartment. I wouldn't put it past him either. The man takes his nursing degree very seriously.”

“I guess it's lucky that neither one of us is smoking then,” Chandler says.

As always, he is struck by how easily Ben brings up his boyfriend in conversation.

Ben's a good kid, he thinks. He reminds him a little of himself at that age, sarcastic and wry; just infinitely more comfortable in his own skin.

He was always a little uncomfortable with the way Ben suddenly just disappeared out of their lives once Emma arrived, knowing intimately how difficult it is to deal with flighty parents; the sense of crushing rejection that comes with it.

Ross had tried to make amends, but in true Ross fashion his attempts had often been awkward and misguided.

“Have you talked to Emma yet?” he asks, knowing how much Emma loves her older brother. The twins adore him too – he's always been the cool cousin, the one who lives in Brooklyn and knows the names of all the exciting new bands that Chandler is much too old to properly appreciate.

Then again, Chandler's never been cool.

His question makes Ben huff out a laugh.

“Em told me dad took her tattoo very well. She was almost disappointed – she'd already made me help her workshop a big speech about how it was her body and her choice and how the watercolor ink design reflected her personal growth.”

“She could still have used it on Rachel,” Chandler says, smiling a little against his will.

“She'd come up with a different speech for her,” Ben says, mouth curling in amusement.

“He took it a lot better than I expected,” Chandler says. “I was expecting fireworks.”

Ben snorts. He leans against the banister, long legs crossed at the ankle.

“You should have seen his freak-out when I told him I was bi. He started ranting about the evils of Barbie dolls and how it was my moms' fault.”

He takes another drag on his cigarette.

“I told him that I sure as hell didn't inherit my fondness for cock from either of them, and then I slammed the door in his face and didn't speak to him for a month.”

There's a hard look on his face as he speaks, and Chandler wonders at his bravery.

It took Chandler years to accept that he was attracted to men, and he wonders what his life would have been like if he could just have been a little more honest, a little more brave.

He loves Monica and the life they've built together, but maybe he would still have all that even if he hadn't spent his 20s and 30s hating himself.

“Do you think it's true,” Chandler asks, “that our upbringing made us that way?”

There's always been that nagging concern that he was somehow 'marked' by his parents, his man-crazy mother, his, well, his man-crazy dad. Like it was fated.

Ben snorts at him. “Try to get funding for a study with that hypothesis, I dare you,” he says, pointing at him with his cigarette, and Chandler is suddenly reminded that he's an anthropologist.

“Sexuality is a spectrum,” Ben says, thin hands sketching a wave in the air. “You and me, we are just more prone to self-examination than someone like my dad.”

He straightens up from his slouch.

“Toxic masculinity is a hell of a drug,” Ben says.

He drops his cigarette and grinds it under the heel of his boot.

“But he's trying to do better, and I appreciate that.”

**Author's Note:**

> The idea for this has been floating around my brain ever since I read the youtube comments for [an interview](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0SfhM9AGds) Cole Sprouse did about his time on _Friends_. There were so many people calling for a _Friends_ reunion with a grown-up Ben, and comparing Cole to Chandler, and it made me think about what Ben would be like today. 
> 
> It also made me think about the current reexamination of Ross as a character, and how that might play into it.


End file.
